


dance into the light

by dragonsinparis



Series: both sides of the story [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen, let me live, the phil collins reference in the summary is unintentional, unlike all the other phil collins references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 12:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11230674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsinparis/pseuds/dragonsinparis
Summary: After Hawkmoth's defeat, as Marinette misses her partner and Adrien discovers who he is in the wake of his father's arrest......Nathalie Sancour has one last job to do for Gabriel Agreste.Against all odds, it's for the greater good. That doesn't mean it isn't risky. Fortunately, sometimes help comes from unexpected places.(side-story tosomething happened on the way to heaven)





	dance into the light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dire_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dire_M/gifts).



> IT IS (WAS) DIRE'S BIRTHDAY AND SHE SAID NATHALIE (OBJECTIVELY THE BEST) WAS HER FAVE. So.

She would never tell anyone - not that she really has anyone to tell - but the week after Gabriel Agreste’s arrest is honestly the most relaxing vacation Nathalie has had in years.

All of his assets are seized and all parts of his business are frozen, so she can’t even pretend that she should be keeping the company going in his absence. Adrien is with the family of his classmate - that pig-tailed girl who made the scarf she stole the credit for with his father - so she doesn’t have to do much, day to day.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t do her part. She covers every legal boundary anyone might use to strip Adrien of his property, and more importantly of his agency. He has had so little choice for so long that she wants to make sure he has this one. She has every newspaper on speed dial; she makes every one of them very aware that she has the best libel lawyers she can find on retainer and that anything they print about Adrien, they’ll pay dearly for.

But aside from that, she is in limbo. She has never realized how much sun comes into her apartment in daylight hours. She has never been in a position to know. It’s very bright, and she finds herself squinting more often than not.

There were so many things she had planned to do when she had free time. She has trouble remembering any of them now. She should be bored, she has never been good where idleness is concerned, but she isn’t.

It is just so _peaceful_ , with Gabriel behind the bars of the Santé Prison.

It isn’t even because of the lack of akuma. The akuma mostly impacted her life when they impacted Adrien.

( _without his mask on_ , her mind amends with no small amount of shame.)

The peace is just because she doesn’t have to deal with Gabriel. Her former boss is the most exhausting human she’s ever met, and even during her employment, she generally spent less than half an hour a day in his presence. It was not just about doing three or four jobs at once, though she did; it was about being prepared for any request at any time. Working for Gabriel Agreste was like constantly bracing for impact. That kind of thing wore a person down.

Despite this, she’s known that Gabriel was Hawkmoth for months. The problem had been that she had no evidence, no confirmation, no way to prove she was anything but crazy - and, to be entirely honest, she had suspected his motivation since the moment she’d figured it out. Ladybug healed the city every time anyway, nothing and no one was lost permanently; Nathalie had nothing to fight for and nothing to gain and everything to lose. So she knew, and did nothing.

Adrien, on the other hand -

Well, she hadn’t seen beneath Chat Noir’s mask until she’d seen the footage of him pushing Gabriel Agreste out the window. It was the first moment she knew; it was the first moment she truly regretted keeping Gabriel’s secret.

Although what peace would the boy have had, if she’d tried to expose his father? She’d never have been believed, she’d have been fired, and Adrien would have been all alone and still have had a supervillain for a father.

Nathalie is patient. She is pragmatic. She had thought it was better to wait, but everything had happened so fast.

But it isn’t as if things didn’t work out. Sort of.

And now she has nothing but time.

*

She has three weeks of slow calm, and then she makes the mistake of visiting Gabriel in prison.

To be fair, she hadn’t been entirely sure what alternatives could have been worked out. The meeting is to deal with legal issues regarding Adrien; she doesn’t trust anyone to care about the boy enough to not leak to the press when the payout would be absolutely, mind-blowingly huge. The public is ravenous for information about the son of Hawkmoth, especially since the two heroes have not been seen since his defeat. In turn, she doesn’t trust anyone to be able to navigate the manipulative nature of her former employer. He’ll want to know about Adrien, she is sure.

Nathalie decides she can only trust herself. She can handle Gabriel Agreste. No one else has more practice.

She isn’t prepared for what appears to be genuine fear.

“I need your help, Nathalie.”

She takes her time raising her eyebrow. The sentence itself is so utterly familiar, and the vulnerable tone behind it so alien to its bearer, that she wants to revel in the irony a little bit.

“I’m helping your son. I see no reason to help you. You’re a supervillain. You hurt people.” 

She does not expect that blow to land; she is not surprised when it has no visible impact. She is a little unnerved, however, that he barely seems to have heard her.

“There’s a corrupt officer on the force. He took something. Something powerful.” 

“Please don’t tell me you’re asking me to steal from a police officer for you,” she says, her voice dripping with disdain.

“It’s not for me. You don’t have to give it to me. You shouldn’t. Keep it for yourself. Don’t let anyone else have it. Don’t let anyone else know you have it. There’s a man called Fu - he’ll find you, sooner or later, and he’ll know what to do. You can trust him. Ask Ladybug. You can’t trust anyone else.”

“I certainly can’t trust you,” Nathalie points out, dryly. This is ridiculous.

“Please, Nathalie,” Gabriel says. He looks so haggard. His hair makes his skin look so washed out in the prison uniform; he’s clearly tried to slick it back with water, but without product it frizzes a bit and draws attention to how unkempt he is rather than helping to hide it. “Officer Durand has the Peacock Miraculous. It was confiscated as evidence at the crime scene. I saw him with it. He’s going to use it, and he’s not a good person. People could get hurt.” His voice dips. “Adrien could get hurt.“ 

“Why would Adrien get hurt?“ She asks lightly. It isn’t really a question, and as he meets her eyes he sees this. A wave of understanding passes between them.

He has a story to tell.

*

Nathalie walks home. She could call a cab but she needs to think. If she were home, she’d be pacing; she’d rather stay on her feet.

This is a mistake. She thinks the words; she isn’t sure whether she means walking or deciding to help Gabriel.

She can tell she’s being followed by the third block. 

She crosses streets for no reason and weaves in and out of shops before ducking into an alley. She dips around a corner, picks up a metal pipe, and uses it to trip her pursuers as they race around the corner. It isn’t hard; they are not exactly covert operatives.

And now she has two of Adrien’s classmates sprawled at her feet: the boy who had wanted to throw him a birthday party, and the girl who runs that silly website about Ladybug.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to explain why you’re following me,” Nathalie sighs. 

The boy looks as if he isn’t sure what to do with himself. The girl doesn’t miss a beat.

“You’re conspiring with Gabriel Agreste!“ she announces.

“That’s a leap,” Nathalie replies.

“You’re coming from the Santé. You must have been visiting him!”

“I was.”

“You - ” the girl pauses and narrows her eyes, as if she didn’t expect Nathalie to agree so easily. “Why?”

“Because I manage his son’s estate and had some legal questions regarding said son’s ability to not have everything confiscated by the state. I care about the boy; I’d like him to be able to keep what is his. I believe his father is guilty and should be punished accordingly for his crimes, but his fortune was acquired legally and I want Adrien to have it.”

The two of them look at each other, then at her. Nathalie sighs and opens the briefcase she’s carrying for an instant - long enough for them to read the title of her legal documents, and nothing else.

“…we just want him to be okay,” the boy says. “Adrien likes you. We didn’t want him to be disappointed twice.“

“I understand that, but perhaps - ” she pauses. She’d been about to suggest something more healthy, something more safe, something to directly show Adrien that they cared in a way that was personal and intimate, which she was so horrifically terrible at.

But what she needed was a distraction at the police station, and then these two had landed in her lap.

“Perhaps you can help me protect him,” she finishes.

*

Nathalie is at the front desk of the police department. Officer Moreau is sick of her.

She doesn’t blame him. She’s been here asking him legal questions way over his head for twenty minutes, and none of the other officers are here to bail him out. Ladybug is back, apparently, and the few other officers on duty have all gone out to see if they can catch up with her. Presumably this is for the trial, but Nathalie is sure it is mostly for the spectacle. It doesn’t matter - the spotted heroine, whomever she is, couldn’t have had better timing. 

She wonders who this girl is, Adrien’s partner in heroism. She has a new appreciation for the girl who has helped keep him safe so many times.

“I just have one more question, officer,” she says politely. This is a lie. She has forty-five more questions, all of them meaningless and full of legal jargon. She has memorized the list, and is adding to it based on his answers. None of his answers are helpful or correct, but that isn’t really the point. The point is to keep him busy.

The website girl sneaks behind him towards the evidence locker, but when she comes out again, her hands are still empty.

Of course this Officer Durand wouldn’t leave it in evidence. Nathalie wants to curse; her face remains a smooth mask.

She drops a pencil on the floor; as Officer Moreau bends to get it, she mouths _Durond_  to the girl, and nods to the row of desks. The girl nods back, and glances across each name plate.

Nathalie gives a tight-lipped smile to Officer Moreau, thanks him for getting her pencil, and asks him about private security in regard to the property even though it’s technically an active crime scene, and whether the police or Chat Noir would be liable for any damage done to the house’s contents if they couldn’t repair the window that Gabriel had been thrown out of. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the girl rise from the drawer of one of the desks, something turquoise and fan-like in her hands.

The drawer closes with an audible click.

Officer Moreau stiffens.

The girl’s eyes go wide and she drops to the floor behind the desk as the officer turns. He can’t see her, but all he has to do is walk a few feet around the desk and she’ll be caught.

Nathalie hears a walkie-talkie crackle and a whisper - “Rena Rouge to Ninja Turtle, GO!” 

Oh, they are definitely going to get caught. Nathalie’s heart clenches; she braces herself for whatever legal mess this will turn into when Adrien finds out that -

“ _ **DJ PARTY MIX FRIEND TELEGRAM!!**_ ” the boy announce-screams, sliding into the room and _blaring_ something out of a boombox on his shoulder with balloons tied to it as he aggressively headbangs to the beat. “ ** _YOU!! HAVE BEEN CHOSEN!! TO RECEIVE!! THIS PARTY!! BECAUSE IT’S A PARTY!! TO BE!! YOUR FRIEND!! LOVE STEVE!!_** ”

“I DON’T KNOW ANY STEVE,” Officer Moreau yells over the music.

“ _ **I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THIS SICK BEAT!!**_ ” the boy yells back.

“TURN IT OFF!”

 “ _ **WHAT??**_ ”

Poor man, Nathalie thinks, relief coursing through her so hard she almost smiles.

Officer Moreau goes after the boy in an effort to shut the spectacle down. The boy dances away; Nathalie’s never seen someone do such a good job avoiding someone else while not making it look entirely intentional. 

The girl sneaks behind Officer Moreau out the door.

“ ** _WE HOPE!! YOU’VE ENJOYED!! THIS PARTY!! FROM STEVE!!_** ” the boy yells, before running around to the other side of the room where the door is and following her out.

Officer Moreau turns to Nathalie. She gives him her best unruffled stare. 

“Just one more question, Officer,” she says. “Maybe two.”

*

“Did you get it?“ Gabriel Agreste asks, from behind plated glass.

“Get what?” Nathalie asks. 

He knows better than to ask again.

* 

A little old Chinese man is at her door.

“I’m Fu,” he says. 

She gives him the peacock jewel. She had checked with Ladybug; she wasn’t about to take Gabriel Agreste at his word.

Fu looks down at it, then back up at her. He pockets it. He tilts his head, considering.

“I know you probably aren’t the biggest fan of butterflies right now,” he says. “But I have a broach I think would suit you quite well.”

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S A PARTY!! THAT YOU READ!! THIS FANFIC!!
> 
> come yell at me for my perpetual phil collins references @ [my tumblr](http://dragonsinparis.tumblr.com/)


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